Practical tips for small biz owners

Archive for February, 2011

Each morning, as the sun begins to shine on the side of the house, the birds begin lining up on the lawn. They’re very smart, entrepreneurial type birds: each morning, as the sun warms up the side of the house, tent caterpillars begin to climb up the house. It’s like a buffet for birds.

They understand instinctively what we resist intellectually: to build your business (and fill your tummy), you must pick your target audience — then you must go to where your target audience congregates.

Yet I speak with so many self-employed people who resist the idea of picking just one target audience. They think they’ll lose business if they just focus on one narrow market. Hey, listen, birds eat more than caterpillars (there’s a bird feeder not 20 feet from them full of seeds). But they choose which ONE thing to go after and go after it with gusto. When they’ve had success with that “market,” they move on to the next one.

So, go ahead and choose just one target audience that you’ll go after for the next 3-6 months, then figure out where they congregate: which newspapers and magazines they read, which websites they visit, what groups they belong to — then go after them! Once you’ve had success with that one target audience, go ahead and do the same with a second, third and fourth market.

You don’t have to limit the number of markets you go after. But you do need to focus on one at a time, if you want a higher level of success.